Stannis
by Sally Mn
Summary: He can't stop wondering about the one who was gone...  Series 3-4


**Stannis**

Tarrant admitted it, if only to himself. He was curious.

Oh, not about Blake. No, even if he had been interested in the man - which he wasn't - there was no need, Blake was still _everywhere_ on the ship. In the leather jacket still slung over a chair in the galley, the heavy boots slung in a corner of the flight deck. In the odd sheaves of paper, covered with a forceful scrawl, that kept turning up in odd places. In the forty-odd 'recipes' for Hearty Faux-Beef Concentrate and Zen's one-and-only-and-barely-drinkable kaffeen that both Zen and Avon refused to reprogram for current tastes. In the locked door to the cabin nearest the flight deck, which Zen would not open nor answer questions about.

In a half-glimpsed medallion around Avon's neck, a catch in Cally's voice, the way Vila collected those rumours... and in the silent echoes around the name made when they spoke it.

No, it wasn't Blake he was curious about. It was the other one. The woman. The pilot. Stannis.

And she was nowhere to be found. All the cabins, the winding passages, the massive wardrobes, the treasure rooms... it was as if she'd never set foot in them. There was not a single paper in her hand, not a record with Zen of her voice, not so much as a scarf or glove thrown aside when they'd abandoned the ship. Her cabin was brisk, uncluttered, bare of anything that spoke of her.

It was as if she had never even been there.

**~oOo~**

"Jenna?" Vila half-opened an eye to peer at him. Tarrant wondered if it was worth mentioning that 'on watch' should involve having both eyes open to be able _to_ watch, but decided to let it go. This once. "Pretty. And nice. And famous. And a good friend and great pilot. And did I say pretty?" There was something in his voice that said clearly how much Vila thought the new substitute didn't meet up in any of this. "Why'd you need to know?"

Tarrant gritted his teeth. He wasn't stupid, and the truth - _Cally will say something alien and mysterious and absolutely incomprehensible, and smile in that all-knowing way I already hate, and Avon will simply use it to insult me more than you can_ - wasn't going to answer. He settled for a shrug and, "Just curious."

Vila shook a sleep head. "That's a bad habit 'round here, can get people killed."

"But you do miss her -?"

"As much as anyone does," Vila said. "I'd have her back, if that's what you're asking. But myself, I wouldn't argue the point with Avon."

"Why not?"

Vila gave him a look that spoke volumes, and not all of it about Avon. "Because, of course. Look, I wouldn't worry too much about getting replaced if I were you, and thank the fates I'm _not _you, okay? Never wanted to be a space commander -"

_You would never have been asked,_ was on the tip of Tarrant's tongue, but for once he bit down on the words.

"- But anyway, take it from me, when I said as much as anyone, I wasn't talking about anyone on this ship."

"Cally -?"

"That's Cally's business," Vila shut his eyes, and settled down again, clearly ready to doze off as soon as the nosy newcomer was satisfied. "Jenna... she's a pilot, a smuggler and a career crook like me. Don't grow roots, that's one of the things you learn young and take with you anywhere in all the crooked sectors of space." He seemed to think a bit more, then shrugged without opening his eyes. "Mind you, we both made a hash of that here. But for Jenna, the roots still pulled up easily enough, didn't they?"

"Why?" He had no idea what the Delta meant, but hid it manfully.

"Maybe she couldn't have what she wanted. Dunno, really, but don't worry, I don't see her coming back any time."

"That's not what I -" Tarrant stopped. As he really had no idea what he did want to know for, explaining was useless, and he didn't have to explain to Vila - of all people! - anyway. "Thank you, you've been a great help."

**~oOo~**

He didn't talk to Cally, and after a while it faded to a vague, rare itch at the edge of his mind. There were other thingsto think about, minor matters like exploding planets, giant spiders, Auronar legends and alien plagues, and his teammates' girlfriends, Vila's new one and Avon's, rather older and not nearly as dead as she was supposed to be.

_Not_ as dead... and that made them _all _think of others who were supposed to be dead and gone as well. Tarrant didn't know if Cally or Vila had seen the gleam in cold brown eyes over that idea, quickly masked as it was by careful, cold indifference.

If Avon had been thinking at all - through the haze of what in _anyone else _would be called grief - it surely would have been of Blake, and whether the man might turn up again to claim his ship and his place here... and whether they would all take him back. And apart from Dayna -? probably, Tarrant thought. He didn't fool himself on that: Avon still wore that medallion, Cally still had that echo in her voice and mind, and Vila still spoke of _that _time, and who was crew _then_ and who _wasn't_.

But if Avon had spared a slight, passing thought for their ex-pilot, the current one would eat his FSA medals with hellhund sauce. Triple-strength. And in any case, Tarrant knew, it wasn't _about_ who took that post on the flight deck and who might give it up. Not for him, at least. It was more...

_"Jenna, she's a pilot... don't grow roots... they pulled up easily enough..." _

It was just... more than that. After all, every other ship he'd taken over, there'd still been traces of other pilots, other personalities in the autosystems, the battle memory systems, the computer logs... hell, even the way the chair had worn.

Somehow, he couldn't help but think how light and quickly forgotten Stannis's handprint on the crew, the team, this wonderful, unique ship only she - and he - had truly understood, had been. He couldn't help but wonder how quick to forget they might be if...

But then something came up, and he pushed it away again. First, a fight (how unusual) with Avon... the business with a megalomaniac ghost, then the business with a megalomaniac President, and then with a very big, very hungry brain, and... oh, other things. So it slipped his mind again.

It wasn't as if it mattered, or there was any reason to think of past crew one and all...

**~oOo~**

Until the ship they'd both flown was truly gone.

**~oOo~**

"Her name was Jenna."

It had been months, something over a year in fact, since Tarrant had last thought about her, but there was something in the way the name was said, in a deep, harsh, bitter voice, that caught his wavering attention. He was cold, aching, all too aware of how dangerous this planet Gauda Prime could be, and desperately suspicious of this scarred and menacing bounty hunter who had quite literally picked him out of the wreckage. Avon's latest plan - to find the long-lost leader who had _never_ quite left them even now - had gone disastrously wrong, they were probably all dead or dying... hell, _he_ was probably going to die at this man's hands...

He should keep alert, keep his guard up, keep his mouth shut. But he couldn't help himself.

"What happened to her?"

"She tried to run the blockade once too often. Happens to all of them eventually."

It sounded so calm, so callous, so treacherously simple. "You made the capture?"

"Nobody made the capture. She hit the self-destruct. And when it blew, she took half a squadron of gunships with her. Brace yours-"

"What was she like?" He heard the words come out of his mouth, and would have kicked himself if it hadn't hurt too much.

There was a silence - the man turned their flyer up and away from the ground again, and turned that burning, one-eyed gaze on him. "What?"

Ah hell, no getting away from it now. Tarrant mentally shrugged, winced at the shaft of pain it caused, and threw caution to blazes.

"I may have known her - known of her, not many smuggler pilots of that name... I'm just curious. This ship I was once on," he felt the man tense, "the captain and the pilot, both were gone before I got there. Well, the captain was sort of gone, he was still there, still _everywhere_, his things, his authority, his presence... _him_, everywhere. But the pilot - Jenna -?" and he realised he had never called her that before, she was always Stannis to him, "was nowhere. Not a trace. It was as if she had never even - _been_ there."

The silence stretched thinly.

"The others... didn't seem to care, or even notice. Not her. And that always made me wonder."

"Why?"

"Because... just because." He turned a slightly blurry gaze on the other man, and surrendered to the pain, the weariness, and the curiosity that had never quite - _entirely_ died. "What was she like, Blake?"

The man said nothing for a moment, then forced the flyer into a sharp turn before speaking. "Where is Avon?"

"He - they - teleported down, the ship was in trouble," Tarrant could barely believe he was doing this. "Somewhere below. They do have Orac."

"Of course."

"He's looking for you."

"Because -?"

"Oh, he gave us half a dozen reasons, all of which made sense. Hard... practical... sense."

"Avon," the man said softly, "is not as hard and practical as he likes to think."

"No." _That_ Tarrant had known for a long time. Too long.

"Jenna was the practical one, the loner, the pragmatist." Blake's voice roughened. "She loved the ship in her way, but not enough to fight for it, not enough to _live_ in it. And even less did she love... people. Not even those she knew and lived with. Unlike me, she never really _needed _other people. And unlike me, she knew she would never go back. I never knew her to speak of the Liberator, or the others, again."

_Like they never spoke of her. _

"Nothing was there because she took everything of herself with her... always, wherever she went, even when she died. So she left not even a memory, not even a fragment of herself behind."

_Unlike you. _

"Jenna was star-bright, space-cold, and in the end far stronger than I was," Blake sighed, "and so in the end, nothing was left."

He flicked a switch that Tarrant vaguely recognised as a spacenav locator. They were obviously going to find his crew... find Avon. And if he still didn't trust the man, he couldn't find the energy to be surprised, or suspicious, or even more than mildly uneasy about it.

Unlike Stannis, he - and he now knew, Blake - always _did _leave too much of themselves with others. And should, could, perhaps would eventually find it again...

**- the end -**


End file.
